Ethnic tension rising in southern Kyrgyzstan says report

Less than two years after clashes between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in southern
Kyrgyzstan killed more than 400 people, a leading think tank has warned that
relations between the two communities are worsening once again.

In a 23-page report published this week, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) wrote that leaders in Osh and other cities in the south of the former Soviet state have been pursuing anti-Uzbek policies which have disenfranchised and frustrated the large Uzbek community.

“While Uzbeks are far from embracing violence and have no acknowledged leaders, their conversations are turning to retribution, or failing that a final lashing out at their perceived oppressors,” ICG wrote.

The report will make tough reading for Almazbek Atambayev, the Kyrgyz president, who won an election in October by campaigning on national unity.

But the reality is that the central government’s power diminishes in the south, which is emotionally and physically detached from the north.

Osh is a day’s drive across high mountain passes from Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, in the north. In winter, the heavy snow can block the passes. Emotionally, southern Kyrgyzstan has a far more nationalist bent than the more cosmopolitan north.

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Ever since a revolution in April 2010 unseated the southerner Kurmanbek Bakiyev as president, political talk and intrigue in Kyrgyzstan has focused on the country’s north-south divide. In its report, ICG singled out Melis Myrzakmaotv, the popular mayor of Osh, as the main figurehead for southern nationalists and a powerful supporter of anti-Uzbek policies.

“Until the end of its term in late 2011, it (Kyrgyzstan’s post-revolution central government) was largely ignored, and sometimes openly defied, by Osh Mayor Melis Myrzakmatov, the standard-bearer of an ethnic Kyrgyz-first policy and the most successful radical nationalist leader to emerge after the killings,” ICG wrote.

“This did not change when President Almazbek Atambayev, a northerner, took office in December 2011.”

Without official channels to funnel their frustration through, the main beneficiaries of the rising tension are radial Islamic groups which have been able to recruit Uzbeks to their causes, the report said although it qualified this statement by saying that most of these recruits were not interested in violence.

Kyrgyzstan is one of the poorest of the five Central Asian state. It is mountainous with no natural resource and a reputation for instability.

Despite this, however, the West has been pouring diplomatic and military resources into the country, which has becoming strategically more important since the US-led war in Afghanistan began in 2001.

At the end of last year, the UK opened its first embassy in Bishkek.

ICG recognised the importance of maintaining stability in Kyrgyzstan and dampening the ethnic tension in the south of the country which threatens this stability.

“The situation can almost certainly be turned around, but it will require assertive and long-term efforts by Bishkek to reassert its power in the south and strong, visible support from the international community,” it wrote.